RE: VIAF contributor model

Barbara,

 

Unlike FRSAD Thema, VIAF doesn’t assume that the things being identified are subjects of works. If they are, VIAF lets others decide how they want to model “is the subject of” and other relationships. I’ve tried to keep VIAF neutral in this struggle by giving users a choice depending on their world-view: 1) closed-world (rdaEnt:Person/rdaEnt:CorporateBody/etc.), 2) open-world (foaf:Person/foaf:Organization/etc.) and 3) schematic/conceptual-world (skos:ConceptScheme/skos:Concept).  (These 3 “separate” world-views only exist in my pea-brain, so don’t take them too literally.)

 

http://viaf.org/viaf/102333412/#skos:Concept


http://viaf.org/viaf/102333412/#rdaEnt:Person 

http://viaf.org/viaf/102333412/#foaf:Person 

 

At first, I thought SKOS was in competition with the various open and closed “realities”, but at the F2F Martin Malmsten introduced me foaf:focus:

 

http://xmlns.com/foaf/spec/#term_focus

 

IMO, foaf:focus creates a potential harmony between concepts and reality that we can use to unpack the stale library notion of authority/surrogate. Localized(?) elements (e.g. prefLabel) can be bound to the skos:Concept while globalized(?) elements (e.g. birth date) can be attached to the “real” thing. (Basically, use SKOS schemes/properties wherever they make sense and model everything else in a “real” ontology somewhere.)

 

I would like to believe that SKOS and foaf:focus could be used in combination with the FR/RDA model, but given the latter’s closed-world perspective I’m not sure they’re ready to buy into the interoperability argument. For them, users should expect to create/use a preferredNameForTheFoo and hasAsSubjectFoo properties combined with VIAF’s /#rdaEnt:Foo URI.

 

Jeff

 

From: Tillett, Barbara [mailto:btil@loc.gov] 
Sent: Tuesday, November 09, 2010 5:12 PM
To: Young,Jeff (OR); public-lld
Subject: RE: VIAF contributor model

 

I still remain concerned that by using SKOS for names of persons and corporate bodies, there is either an explicit or implied "is the subject of"  relationship going on for the person/corporate body being described with respect to some work.  Am I wrong? - Barbara Tillett

 

From: public-lld-request@w3.org [mailto:public-lld-request@w3.org] On Behalf Of Young,Jeff (OR)
Sent: Tuesday, November 09, 2010 5:05 PM
To: public-lld
Subject: RE: VIAF contributor model

 

Thanks for all the feedback. Sorry for my lag following up.

 

VIAF still needs to deliver more substance to fulfill its potential, but the next release should improve interoperability while adding support for foaf:Organization/rdaEnt:CorporateBody. Mockups of Jane Austen and Die deutsche Nationalbibliothek are attached. 

 

As suggested back at the start of this thread, SKOS will play a core infrastructure role in the next release. Each contributor will be modeled as a skos:ConceptScheme and every contributed record will be modeled as a skos:Concept in the contributor’s scheme. The contributed concept URIs coined by VIAF will be based on the contributor’s “record” ID and will behave by redirecting to the VIAF cluster to which it is matched (which could change over time). 

 

Here is a test system URI for a contributed SELIBR record (207420) to demonstrate:

 

http://test.viaf.org/viaf/sourceID/SELIBR|207420#skos:Concept


 

Tangent: IMO, Library Linked Data authority systems in the future SHOULD be based on skos:ConceptScheme/skos:Concept and we’re starting to see this with LCSH and SELIBR. I suspect that ANY skos:ConceptScheme could potentially be viewed as an “authority system” and clients should be able to use them as such without assuming any architecture or domain model dependencies.

 

For VIAF contributors that choose to follow the SKOS model in their own domains, VIAF should map to their URIs using owl:sameAs. You can observe this in the attached example for Jane Austen involving SELIBR:

 

<http://viaf.org/viaf/sourceID/SELIBR%7C207420#skos:Concept>

skos:inScheme <http://viaf.org/authorityScheme/SELIBR> ;

owl:sameAs <http://libris.kb.se/resource/auth/207420#concept> .

 

I suspect there will be some concern that VIAF is coining “alias” URIs, but I would argue that intentional HTTP URI aliases play a *functional role* in Linked Data by decentralizing information *about* the thing. SELIBR can deliver its information about “the thing” from its URI and VIAF can deliver more (especially linking) information from its URI. The information may come from different perspectives and yet the players mutually agree it’s the same “real world” thing they’re describing.

 

The solution for the http://www.w3.org/TR/skos-reference/#S14 integrity constraint for skos:prefLabel on “clusters” is still unclear to me and thus won’t be addressed in the next release. (Sorry.) The custom properties viaf:hasEstablishedForm and viaf:hasXRefAlternate properties will continue to be used for now although the use cases for them are unclear.

 

Nevertheless, I want to align the VIAF ontology with SKOS/SKOSXL wherever possible and so the viaf:Heading class will be upgraded to skosxl:Label in the ontology like so:

 

viaf:Heading rdfs:subClassOf skosxl:Label .

 

In deference to FRSAD, the next release of VIAF will continue to treat labels (i.e. viaf:Headings) as 1st class identifiable resources at the expense of using plain literals. Without practical use cases, I’m uncomfortable with this choice.

 

Jeff